The housing crisis in Sydney is worsening daily. Affordable housing for families and individuals is getting harder to find and in many areas there is nothing affordable and in some cases no available houses at all. 

Meanwhile, throughout each suburb there are numerous abandoned houses that have been left neglected by their owners, progressively decaying to the point of untenable disrepair.

Abandoned houses cause all sorts of community problems such as fire hazards, vermon infestations, decreasing land values in the street and neighbourhood, eyesores/ general aesthetics, attractive venues for junkies, graffiti and other crimes, gas leaks, invitation to thieves and building materials can deteriorate causing potential physical or health dangers just to name a few. 

My mission in short is to repair, maintain and occupy these neglected dwellings. This will provide much needed additional emergency accomodation in some dwellings and lower affordable rentals in others. Any rent collected will be used to help maintain the properties, pay council rates and utilities and provide any other services that people in need might require. 
The purpose of this petition is to gain the support of the local community and government departments to change the laws surrounding adverse possession of clearly abandoned and neglected properties in order to provide the community with accomodation that is desperately needed and make use of resources that are being wasted by their current financial controller. In other words, permission to take over the abandoned properties, clean them up repair and continue to maintain and manage them without the looming potential of being arrested for trespassing. Then occupy them with those who need emergency accomodation or rent them to lower income families or individuals. 

There are various circumstances that might cause a house to be abandoned. They may be deceased estates, or owned people who have multiple houses and have for whatever reason left vacant but more commonly these days are owned by international owners who have no interest in maintaining but are using their property for tax or political purposes.

Some are deceased estates that have potentially not been left to anyone, which means after a period of time the government will eventually take control. Unfortunately, during this waiting period these houses fall into a state of disrepair and by the time anything is done only developers looking to knockdown and rebuild are interested.

It seems criminal that someone has spent their life working hard in order to pay their mortgage and multitudes of taxes involved to own their own slice of land and then it ends up back in the hands of the state to profit again from the same property. 

I would think that these property owners would rather see their much loved  homes that they themselves have spent years maintaining continue to be looked after and used to home people in need rather than neglected, destroyed and ultimately repossessed by the government to profit from again.

Some houses are left empty by people who have multiple houses and have decided to remain at one of their other homes often due to repairs required, location, weather, medical needs, cashflow and various other reasons.

International buyers regularly buy up Australian property, particularly in Sydney, taking advantage of no interest loans available to citizens in their own countries. Some of these loans are interest free with the condition that after 99 years the property ownership is transferred back to their bank. Meaning that an international bank will then own substantial land in Sydney in a couple of generations which could have all sorts of implications down the track. It seems off balanced that Aussie citizens are not permitted to own land in these international locations as per their government laws. Some are using their property here for tax benefits and others may have fallen into financial hardship or other situations that have prevented them from ensuring their Aussie properties are maintained and occupied.

Please support this cause! If the laws were changed it would mean better use of all available housing resources as well as home owners will be more likely to stay on top of their maintenance and upkeep for fear of loosing their rights to their purchase. So the streets will look better, people will be homed and rates and utilities will be kept up to date. It’s a win - win - win for community, government and homeowners of surrounding properties. 

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